King Lear (la noche llegará)
FEBRUARY 27–28, 2026
DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE
James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean Florie Seery, Associate Dean
Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Carla L. Jackson, Assistant Dean Nancy Yao, Assistant Dean of Student Life
PRESENTS
King Lear (La Noche Llegará)
By William Shakespeare
Adapted by Héctor Flores Komatsu 小松輝 and Thando Mangcu
Directed by Héctor Flores Komatsu 小松輝
creative team
Scenic Designer
Richard Lee
Costume Designer
Kristen Taylor
Lighting Designer
Jacob Nguyen
Sound Designer and Original Music
Jinling Duan 段珒苓
Projection Designer
Bobby Marcus
Production Dramaturg
Thando Mangcu
Technical Director
Jacob DeSousa
Fight and Intimacy
Directors
Kelsey Rainwater
Michael Rossmy
Stage Manager
Payton Gunner
cast
Edmund Juice Banner
Edgar Hiếu Ngọc Bùi
Lear
Amrith Jayan
Cordelia/Fool
Gretta Marston
Gloucester
Michael Saguto
Regan
Emma Rosalyn Steiner
Goneril
Rosie Victoria
Kent
Grace Wissink
atmospheric and content guidance
This production contains violence and generational trauma.
setting
A nation of immigrants, not unlike our own.
King Lear (la noche Ilegará) is performed without an intermission.
This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
artistic
Projection Content
Creators
Nathaniel Britton
Jasmine WIlliams
Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer
Judith C. Villalva
Assistant Stage Managers
Lexi Ashraf
Taylor N. Oliva production
Associate Production Manager
Tamara Morris-Thompson
Assistant Technical Director
Will Maresco
Production Electrician
Kevin Kenkel
Projection Engineer
Steph Lo 盧胤沂
Projection Programmer
Jasmine Williams
Associate Safety Advisors
Mae Mironer
Forrest Rumbaugh
Run Crew
Ruben Carrazana, Parker
Essex Hardy, Ebonee
Johnson, Carter Sundown
King, Francesca Pan
administration
Associate Managing Director
Iyanna Huffington Whitney
Assistant Managing Director
Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann
Management Assistant
Maya Simon
Production Photographer
Maza Rey
David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.
special
thanks
Acme Lighting, Los Cardencheros de Sapioriz, Juan Pablo Villa, Liam Beveridge, John Maria Gutierrez, Paul Pryce, Maxine Wood, José María Flores Castro, Bernard and Francois Baschet, Yale Wrestling Club
Yale acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
We also acknowledge the legacy of slavery in our region and the enslaved African people whose labor was exploited for generations to help establish the business of Yale University as well as the economy of Connecticut and the United States.
The Studio Projects are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.
THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND , established by Peggy Cowles ’65, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.
The Night Will Come and Will Bring Forth a Clear Morning
The title of this essay is taken from the titles of two ‘Canto Cardenche’ songs, a two-hundredyear-old Northern Mexican folk music tradition. The landscape of this adaptation is not tied to a specific place or time, but is permeated with the genre. Canto Cardenche begins King Lear (La Noche Llegará) with Lear’s awareness of his mortality. Named after a cactus whose thorns hurt when they pierce the skin, and even more when they are pulled out, this music is born of struggle, an a capella form travelling through towns, sharing community stories. It was begun by exploited and hidden laborers, their salve at the end of a long day, “expel[ling] pain through song,” writes Elisa Aguilar Funes. She continues, “laborers sang it collectively to tell their stories, to reach divinity, or rejoice in life.” It bookends this play, expressing a pain “produced by love, exile, or death.”
Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King Lear is about a ruler who casts off responsibility without wanting to relinquish status. With his Fool accompanying him reminding him of his humanity, he finds himself in a no-man’sland, moving toward “nothing.” The play is an amalgamation of older stories and legends, and here, it is interpreted once again by Héctor Flores Komatsu as, la noche llegará. His Lear is a tale of two fathers: one a titan who foolishly divides his empire among his daughters
precipitating the crumbling of his very self; the other blind to the damage his righteous callousness has done both his sons.
As Lear divides his kingdom, prepared to give his favorite child, Cordelia, the grandest share, he demands a ‘Love Test’: his three daughters must profess their love to him. Cordelia cannot bring herself to play along, thus the kingdom is divided between Goneril and Regan, who know how to answer. A new order. Flattery cannot save the king from his reckoning. Children given nothing, give back nothing. In the Gloucester household, a “bastard” son, Edmund, returns to his father after some time away. He, too, tries to build himself from nothing, from the dust, but he is blinded by malice. In fact, blindspots are these characters’ downfall.
Héctor Flores Komatsu’s King Lear echoes with nothing and blindness and song in this fictional landscape. It hurts to pull the thorn out of the skin, but out it must come. So, the sweet, suffering sounds of Canto Cardenche usher us into this tragedy of two households weathering an eclipse and a massive storm to find peace with the lyrics expressing, “the time has come for me to leave towards the stars…the night will come, and it won’t end. I will sleep.”
A storm brings forth a clearer dawn.
—Thando Mangcu, Production Dramaturg